North Carolina · Soup
Carolina Brunswick Stew
- Intermediate
- 2 h 30 m
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with wood-smoke running underneath, savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, on a rich, rounded finish.
Ingredients
- 500g smoked pork or barbecue
- 500g cooked chicken, shredded
- 55g butter
- 2 onions, diced
- 800g crushed tomatoes
- 500g potatoes, diced
- 300g lima beans
- 300g corn kernels
- 500ml chicken stock
- 3 tbsp barbecue sauce
- 2 tbsp Worcestershire
- Hot sauce, salt, and pepper
The skills inside
Sweating aromatics: soft, never browned
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · fish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Sweat the onions in the butter until soft.
- Add the tomatoes, potatoes, and stock and simmer 30 min until the potatoes start to break down. 30 min
- Add the limas and cook 15 min, then the corn, pork, and chicken. 15 min
- Stir in the barbecue sauce and Worcestershire and simmer 45 min more, uncovered, stirring often. 45 min
- Season with hot sauce, salt, and pepper. It should be thick, not soupy.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sweating aromatics: soft, never browned 198 recipes
- No colour anywhere: tipped under the light the pieces are translucent to pale gold, with no tan edges, no brown tips, and no browned flecks suspended in the fat.
- The pan is quiet: a low steady hiss, not a crackle. A crackle means the moisture has gone and browning has already started.
- The largest piece pressed against the side of the pan collapses without resistance and with no crunch left at its centre.
- The fat is still clear and loose in the pan and the pan floor is clean: nothing caught, nothing browned on to deglaze, because there was never any fond to build.
- It tastes sweet and mild with no raw allium bite at the back of the throat, and none of the roasted sweetness that belongs to the next technique up the heat scale.
Where it goes wrong The heat was too high and nothing covered the pan, so the pieces took colour before they softened; the finished dish carries a roasty sweetness where it wanted a clean one, and the pieces are still firm at the centre under browned edges.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.